each fallen robin

  

Alfred Nobel: You’re a writer. Write.

Writer: I can’t. I do everything else but.

Alfred Nobel: But you’re a writer.

Writer: I know.

Alfred Nobel: And you do everything except…write?

Writer: Uh huh.

Alfred Nobel: How does this…?

Writer: Work? Got me.

Alfred Nobel: So, what is it that you do?

Writer: All I’ve got are these moments to share with other people. Just tiny gasps of time spent, and then it’s over, done, gone. Nothing sustains itself. I’m all bits and pieces in a most spontaneous manner.

Alfred Nobel: Sounds oddly familiar.

Writer: So? If one can’t scavenge from oneself…

Alfred Nobel: Sure. But.

Writer: Everyone I know has got a big but. Let’s not speak about yours just yet, okay?

Alfred Nobel: Well, it’s hardly anything.

Writer: Still, that’s something though.

Alfred Nobel: I guess. How’s your appetite?

Writer: I keep forgetting to eat. If that’s what you mean. It’s been, what, days?

Alfred Nobel: No. I meant your, well…is the well all dried up?

Writer: Oh, in the hallowed grounds of those well-trod fields of creativity’s imaginings.

Alfred Nobel: So, how fertile is that dear imagination of yours.

Writer: Oh, it’s fertile. It’s…something, something. I used to write until I was all wrote out. Now? I just pace myself with nips from a bottle of vermouth. Nothing happens, still. Though I tend not to care so much at a certain point. And, you know, caring too deeply must be avoided at all costs.

Alfred Nobel: Wouldn’t that go contrary to those old writerly ways?

Writer: Perhaps. I don’t give shit. Dealing with a broken and smashed up heart is rough enough stuff on its own. Don’t really want to add any deeper meaningful tugs in there to thrash the shards of all that hurt around. Fuck it. I wanna be sedated, you know? Fuck it. Fuck all this noise. I’m moving to Mexico and praying for rain.

Alfred Nobel: Oh, so here we go. I knew there was something more…

Writer: Oh, go fuck a bag of roasted almonds.

Alfred Nobel: Lonely. Lonely. Lonely places to dwell.

Writer: More and more distractions, and more too. Just things to keep me, well, occupied. Because I never am, with anything.

Alfred Nobel: If you never do it, then it’ll always never be done. And if you do it, then it will always be done. Does that make any sense? I think it does, right?

Writer: It’s stupid. That’s all. I admit all-or-nothing one piece of steak at a time.

Alfred Nobel: Very too close to call.

Writer: My instincts shift to better flavors. Mincemeat, swirled candy jellyfish, cigarette parfait.

Alfred Nobel: And then there was nothing, and nothing times one.

Writer: I don’t understand so many things. I’m either too nice or not nice enough. I get scorned for the tiniest of things. It’s like everything I do, no matter what, just ends up being wrong. And then my love, she’s gone away never to return, and I just have to accept it. And I can’t. It sits on my chest like a semi. I can’t drink my way out from under it, yet that’s all I can do. Golden rivers of beer as far as these eyes will allow me to see. I want my love back, not just pictures of my love’s toes.

Alfred Nobel: Shoot yourself in the foot so you won’t have to run. I get it. Inventing more ways to excuse yourself from doing the things you keep telling yourself you want to be doing. You’re a writer. Write. Otherwise you’re just a burp taking up space in a moan.

Writer: Apt.

Alfred Nobel: You’re not some miracle waiting to happen. Waiting and waiting and waiting. It ain’t coming. It won’t and you are nothing without the things you do. What you do is what makes you who you are. So stop fabricating all this fodder to take the place of action and get to work. The world needs you, buddy. You are supposed to be here. Hit the gas already. Shit. Nobody’s going to wait around for you to get started. Get a fucking move on it.

Writer: I’m running out of clothes.

Alfred Nobel: Survival of the scrappiest.

Writer: I’m all out of dinner reservations.

Alfred Nobel: Dreamt it up only to drool it away on the pillow.

Writer: I fall in love a dozen times a day.  

Alfred Nobel: Buy a harmonium and a hummingbird.

Writer: I don’t remember what clouds are.

Alfred Nobel: Buy yourself another bottle of vermouth, then. Go ahead. I give up and down and all over the fucking place. I give in. I give almost a shit. I…give.

Writer: The barroom of my forgiveness quells the dream-drunk sailors with dead-end stories going nowhere to everywhere’s chained hope. Later and later and later.

Alfred Nobel: Oh, Christ. What a disparaging sham of self-pity. “I hate myself so you don’t have to.” I get it. Go water your creativity’s lawn with the blood of ravens. Shit. This all stinks of lassitude run amok with too many handholds in a mountain of procrastination-inspired worry. I’m done with feeling bad.

Writer: Yes? Me too then. It’s no way to feel, really. Who cares about all this giving up? I’m a writer, damn it.

Alfred Nobel: Are you now?

Writer: Well, that’s what I keep telling people.

Alfred Nobel: What is it then, that you’ve got? What’s left?

Writer: Ideals of never-dealt hands. That’s about what I’ve got. Love letters slipped beneath the door. The most important things keep never getting read. You can’t force a soldier to cease his fire, but maybe you can steal his bullets from him while he sleeps.

Alfred Nobel: Conclusions come. Conclusions go. Let’s cut this shorter. Attention’s getting a little more lost all the time.

Writer: Cleave it then. I’m done, until next time, and the next, and what we might hope is the last to next time too. Everyone’s taking sleeping pills and making speeches from fire escapes. I can’t keep track of each fallen robin. I’m joining the parsnip sellers and the bottle-cap collectors. We’ve got a hell of a lot more victories to lose before this thing expires.

Alfred Nobel: Done.